Albert Einstein reportedly said, “The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.” As the tea party is showing us, however, combining the two leapfrogs way past dangerous into cataclysmic.

Preventing badly needed universal health care, destroying public education with voucher vultures, bringing back socially acceptable racism, championing anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-female discrimination, enabling a doubling — since 2008 — of the number of hate groups in the U.S., replacing scientific facts with corporate and creationist fictions, defunding, deregulating, and disabling positive legislation the majority has democratically passed, blaming the victims for their plight, and proclaiming that none of the suffering they are causing is their problem is a deadly blend of ignorance and arrogance defying any possible moral or ethical justification.

Haughty hate is neither hallowed nor heroic, but only hare-brained and hard-hearted. As the latest polls show, hiding behind tri-cornered hats and revolutionary slogans does not fool real patriots who judge people by what they do and not by what they pretend to be.